Enjoy Black Friday, Cyber Monday

Chennai: Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays are not the prerogative of US online shoppers any more. With the growth of e-commerce in India, e-tailers are keen to let desi consumers too to avail the mega discount benefits.

The Friday following Tha­nksgiving Day is heralded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and is marked by huge promotional sales up to 80 per cent discount in the US. The gala shopping festival runs up to almost a week including Cyber Mondays to enthuse shoppers to bag the missed-out deals online. For this year, Black Friday falls on Nov­ember 28 and the sale ext­ends up to Monday, Dece­mber 2.

Booming e-commerce ma­rket in India, pegged around $13 billion this year, has impelled domestic e-tailers such as eBay, Amazon, Flipkart and shopyourworld to extend the opportunity to Indian neti­zens as well.

“Apart from giving excl­usive access to Indian consumers to products which are not yet launched in India, customers can take advantage of the special Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that may run anywhere between 40- 80 per cent,” said Sa­ndip Shah, MD of Shop­YourWorld, a firm enga­ged in cross-border trade.

The firm, which has tie-ups with 5-6 top e-tailers in the US, claims to have been witnessing up to 400 per cent jump in business on Black Fridays for the last two years and three-fold boost in revenues on Cyber Mondays. “To popularise this global discount sale phenomenon in India, we have tied up with Axis Bank to offer sops for customers,” Shah said.

However, experts warn that it is also the most active season for cyber criminals engaged in cy­ber scam and phishing activities. India has already scored high on the global cyber crime map with the average cost per cyber victim going up from $192 last year to $207.

“Today’s cyber criminals are using sophisticated attacks such as ransom­ware and spear-phishing, which yield them more money per attack,” said Ritesh Chopra, country manager, Norton by Symantec. With 66 per cent of Indian consumers using their mobiles for both work and play, this creates new security risks for enterprises, he added.